The death of Ngugi wa Thiong’o which happened on Wednesday last week has been widely reported in the media – that is, in the mainstream media and social media. Since then diverse remarks in the forms of tributes have been written to celebrate the highly respected Kenyan literary figure who has left our earth plane at the end of his long life. He did not die in his home country but in the United States where he was in exile and committed himself to a career in letters, a career he began in his home country before horrendously horrendous political circumstances forced him to leave his birth-land. 

Since the announcement of his death at the age of 87 years, his greatness as a writer, as a novelist, as a political philosopher and even as a psychologist and a revolutionary as well has been more than sufficiently celebrated. Of course, by the time his body will be given a final farewell there is no doubt that he will be further judged satisfactorily by the common standards of admiration or of likeableness in men, in human beings, as T.S. Eliot would say if he was here today to evaluate Ngugi wa Thiong’o. 

I am not going to evaluate Ngugi as a jury of judgment would do – or as some persons who have appeared in print so far as “critics” have done. As a matter of fact, I am not setting out here to say how good or how great he is or was as a novelist or as a critic or as a ‘translator.’ Yet the column may stray from its intended line of concentration – as the gleaner may wish. The significant things or ‘facts’ about Ngugi, for my purpose, are his resort to his use of writing in his mother tongue and his ‘ambition’ to win the Nobel prize for literature.

His devotion to writing in his mother tongue in his later years and his expertness in it I tied to this ‘ambition‘ in my very first physical contact – and only one – with him in 1984. What a cordial meeting and what an ebullient person I read him to be! What an exuberant person I found him to be! I always remember Ngugi in this and other lights – even when I am writing my critical essays on him.

We met, as I have said, in 1984. We met in the Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling in Scotland where I was as a Visiting Researcher, a Visiting Scholar, for a duration of four months. The university was (and still is) a top university in Britain. The English Studies Department that was then headed by Professor Tommy Dunn, its founding Head, had scholars, essentially British and European Scholars who were promoters of Commonwealth Literature and were very familiar with African Literature and African students and academics (and African scholarship generally).

In fact, several Nigerians had been doctoral students there. Furthermore, several of Faculty Staff had visited our Universities in Zaria, Lagos, Ibadan, Nsukka and Ife as external examiners when our tertiary education was our tertiary education. Besides, several of them had degrees from Leeds and Stirling – or were writing their theses as students of the University of Stirling – or of Leeds University.

Professor Alexander Norman (A.N.) Jeffares who was Professor of English Literature, Leeds University 1957-74, apart from Professor Dunn, was the leading light at Stirling when I visited. He knew Ngugi when Ngugi was there as a Masters student. I worked closely with Professor Jeffares the leading Yeats specialist who, to boot, promoted Commonwealth Literature even up to his year of demise in 1986 in his home country of the Republic of Ireland.

Martin Gray and Angela Smith, an activist, were the two younger Stirling scholars and lecturers I consulted throughout the time of my visit. Of course, the late Professor David Ker, one of my seniors and chums in Zaria (Ahmadu Bello University) in our undergraduate days, who at the time I was at Stirling was a Ph.D student there, facilitated my visit. 

But I am wandering away from Ngugi. He visited the English Studies Department as its guest who had come to share his writing experience with Faculty members and higher degree students.

The Vice Chancellor of the University was equally present incognito – he drove himself there – without pomp and pageantry! What a spectacle! I was in a reverie! David Ker, an M A product of University of Sussex, who was not at all surprised, pulled me out of my reverie.

Ngugi, the pre-summer guest, did not disappoint when he spoke in his soft voice (which did not betray his radicalism and revolutionary fervor) as a worthy artist and an inspired prophet-novelist from Africa.

David Ker, myself, Martin Gray and Angela Smith, David Ker’s supervisor, who was instrumental in Ngugi’s reading/lecturing visit, were exceedingly proud of him. I believed (and still believe) that other members of the audience who came to listen to Ngugi were not disappointed in him no matter their hidden prejudices. 

Personally, my impression of Ngugi (who had just been compelled then to escape from Kenya) was formed when I was alone with him for a very long time under the trees in an open field near the venue where he addressed the mentioned gathering of eggheads. The research I was embarking on was a multi-disciplinary one which had detained (his prison autobiography) as one of my texts.

I asked him by way of an interview touching questions on the right language to employ in dwelling on his subjects. I remember him telling me that he was not a writer dwelling on daffodils. I did not lose sight of his humour. But I spoke seriously. Was he giving William Wordsworth a punch? He asked me if I knew what a daffodil was or if I had seen a daffodil before? I gave him a negative answer.

Then he plucked a plant where we sat. It was of a brilliant yellow colour, and said: “This is a daffodil. Are there daffodils in Nigeria?” I got his message. 

On the question of language, he told me he was done with writing in English. He was going to commit himself henceforth to writing in the language his people, the ordinary and rural folks and fellows would understand and easily follow.

I countered him. I said he would diminish his audience globally. Or was he writing for Kikuyus (or Gikuyus) alone?  In any case, how many of his Kikuyu – or Gikuyu – people were even literate in their mother tongue? His reply was that he would translate his mother tongue writings into English to take care of the concern I raised.

He went further to tell me that writing in his mother tongue might enhance his chances of winning the Nobel. “I will always remember this remark,” I told him. He was quiet. I went further: “Your attack on the West will not help your ‘ambition’. They will never give you their Nobel. Remember J.P. Clark’s America, their America.

They never forgave J.P. Clark for attacking America or Chinua Achebe for attacking Joseph. Conrad.” He was mute. But I let him know that no matter what would happen, he was already great and in estimating him as a great writer the world would take into account the history of his greatness.

For he will always remain and be remembered as an “essential part of history.” T.S. Eliot said this of Wordsworth, I reminded him. We parted on this note. But other things regarding his relationship with Achebe, Africa’s greatest novelist, who disavowed his mother tongue inclination, and Soyinka, Africa’s foremost playwright and dramatist, and his admiration for Nigerians, I won’t disclose – and I am not disclosing – here. But when I told him, finally, that one of them would likely win the Nobel before him, he simply said:”That will be the day for Africa.”
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.